The Impostor

A TRUE STORY THAT IS PACKED WITH FICTION - FICTION CREATED BY ITS MAIN CHARACTER, ENRIC MARCO

But who is Enric Marco? A veteran of the Spanish Civil War, a fighter against fascism, an impassioned campaigner for justice, and a survivor of the Nazi death camps? Or, is he simply an old man with delusions of grandeur, a charlatan who fabricated his heroic war record, who was never a prisoner in the Third Reich and never opposed Franco; a charming, beguiling and compulsive liar who refashioned himself as a defender of liberty and who was unmasked in 2005 at the height of his influence and renown?

In this extraordinary novel - part narrative, part history, part essay, part biography, part autobiography - Javier Cercas unravels the enigma of the man and delves with passion and honesty into the most ambiguous aspects of what makes us human - our infinite capacity for self-deception, our need for conformity, our thirst for affection and our conflicting needs for fiction and for truth.

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Reviews

Swift and captivating prose, yet calibrated to the millimetre and?as obsessively rhythmical as ravel's Bolero. -- Jose-Carlo Mainer * El Pais. * Without doubt, his best novel. -- J M Pouzel Yvancos * ABC. * A fascinating book, very much of our time in this era of fake news and what is called 'historical memories'. * Catholic Herald Books of the Year. * Cercas as added another literary page-turner to his unique oeuvre. He is a master at combining historical truth and fictional viewpoint. * Big Issue * Masterly . . . Cercas probes this mysterious and extraordinary life with uncommon patience, uncommon skill and uncommon sympathy. -- Allan Massie * Scotsman * Javier Cercas is one of Europe's most serious and attractive writers . . . Cercas is not content with the easy story, in this case the unmasking of a false hero. He boldly searches for the hidden truths of his elusive subject and his times. -- Michael Eaude * Literary Review * A very rich text, a true textile of interlinked threads of thought, of history and of stories . . . The Impostor is fiction dealing with the value of history; and it is a history about the vital value of fiction as a guarantor of reality -- Mika Provata-Carlone * Bookanista * Truth and fiction blend in an outstanding novel about a Holocaust impostor * Sunday Times "Must Reads" * Besides being a piece of nifty journalistic detective work, Cercas' book is an insightful psychological study . . . Both convincing and compelling -- Daniel Hahn * Spectator * A fascinating, highly charged, scalpel-sharp dissection. -- Siobhan Murphy * The Times * No Spanish writer has probed the unhealed wounds of the country's history with more subtlety and rigour than Mr Cercas * Economist * The Impostor is a humane, artistically responsible and civilised book, one that you finish feeling heartened that such a serious-minded writer as Cercas is at work. -- David Mills * Sunday Times *

Author description

Javier Cercas was born in 1962. He is a novelist, short-story writer and columnist, whose books include Soldiers of Salamis (which sold more than a million copies worldwide, won six literary awards in Spain and was filmed by David Trueba), The Tenant and The Motive, The Speed of Light and The Anatomy of a Moment. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in Barcelona.